B5: Increasing Fertility Flashcards
What are the pros and cons of giving women FSH and LH in a fertility drug to stimulate ovulation?
Pros: helps women to get pregnant when they couldn’t before
Cons: doesn’t always work & doing it many times is expensive
Too many eggs could be stimulated, resulting in unexpected multiple pregnancies (twins, triplets etc.)
How does IVF work?
IVF involves collecting eggs from the woman’s ovaries and fertilising them in a lab using the man’s sperm.
It can also involve a technique called ICSI, where the sperm is injected directly into an egg. (This is useful if the man has a low sperm count).
The fertilised eggs are then grown into embryos in a laboratory incubator. Once they are tiny balls of cells, one or two of them are transferred to the woman’s uterus.
FSH and LH are given before egg collection to stimulate several eggs to mature (so more eggs can be collected).
What is the obvious benefit of IVF?
Fertility treatment can give an infertile couple a child = increased chance of pregnancy.
What are the cons of IVF?
Multiple births can happen if more than one embryo grows into a baby - risky for the mother and babies (higher chance of miscarriage, stillbirth).
Success rate is low - makes the process stressful and upsetting.
Also physically stressful for the woman - some women have a strong reaction to the hormones (eg. abdominal pain, vomiting, dehydration).
What advances have been made to improve the techniques (and therefore success rate)?
Specialised micro-tools to use on the egg and sperm cells under the microscope. (Also used to remove single cells from an embryo for genetic testing.)
Time-lapse imaging (using a microscope and a camera built into the incubator) to monitor growth of the embryos, helping to identify those more likely to result in a successful pregnancy.
Why are some people against IVF?
It often results in unused embryos that are eventually destroyed. This can be seen as unethical as each embryo is a potential human life.
The genetic testing of embryos before implantation could lead to the selection of preferred characteristics like gender or eye colour.
